


i was marching

by Missy



Category: Evil Dead (Movies), Evil Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death Fix, Character Development, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Protective Siblings, Siblings, Slice of Life, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 05:39:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Cheryl and Ash: before, during and after the cabin.





	i was marching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> This fic includes a few reference to a canonical instance of demonic rape/tentacle vine rape. Please proceed with caution if you find such material triggering.

When Cheryl Williams was no bigger than a bump on a log, she and Ashley used to spend long, enchanted summers with their Granny and Pappy Williams at their beach house in Woods Hole. 

Cheryl hadn’t been there in years – not since her parents sold the place when they put her grandma in nursing care – but she doesn’t really need to go to be there. To conjure it up by willpower, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and bam – there she is at six, lying curled up under a light pink blanket, staring at the shapes the furniture made on the wallpaper when moonlight was thrown against them.

Sometimes they looked like rabbits, and sometimes like looked like bears. On bad days, when her imagination threatened to run wild and frighten her half to death, when the shapes looked like threatening monsters ready to tear out her lungs, it was Ashley who saved her.

It was also Ash who threw cold water on her overactive imagination. He was the one who told her Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy weren’t real (or as he called them, ‘fakers’). But he was also the one who told her that owl in the tree wouldn’t eat her eyeballs and the wardrobe’s shadow wouldn’t attack them in their slumber.

“Don’t worry about ‘em,” Ash would scoff, tucking his already pronounced chin against his kneecap. “You’ve got me to protect you, right?”

That was the talisman Cheryl clutched at when it got bad. When she could remember the feeling of hellfire licking at her heels, when she could feel vines crawling up the inside of her arms, when she felt the cold wind ripping her equilibrium away and send her careening through the air, it was his promise that kept her soul in her body. 

Ash would protect her. That was what brothers did, after all.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

The air smelled like rotting leaves when she jolted back into her body, rocketing from horrors of hell to the mendacity of the normal world, soul and flesh once more sealing into a single entity.

Cheryl’s eyes flew wide open, and she took a careful look around her. Immediately, she felt a sharp pain in her right hand and recognized bruising and the swelling – broken bones. She squared her stance – there would be no help for her unless she got out of this place. She smelled the scent of rotting apples in the air and shuddered.

This fruit cellar. They had put her in the basement. She remembered now.

“Ashley?” She called, pulling her robe closer to her bruised breast with her good hand. God, everything in her ached with every step, but she still moved up the stairs, lifting the heavy trap door, peeping out into the sunlight.

She saw him snarl, and then the rounded barrel tip of a shotgun aimed straight at her head.

“NO! Ash, it’s all right! It’s me!! I’m Cheryl!” she dodged and fended off the aim of his gun.

“Yeah, that’s what you said three hours ago.” She heard his finger tap the safety. “But I ain’t no sucker. Not anymore.”

Quickly, she started spitting out facts, lessons, things she knew about herself that no one could deny. “When you were a baby you had a stuffed rabbit named Mr Binky, and you bit off his paw!!” 

“You think I’m gonna buy that? After what you pulled on Annie?!” he laughed. “The poor kid didn’t stand a chance in a place like that, but me? I was bred for it, baby.”

“Why are you talking like some hero from a biker picture?” she frowned. “You don’t sound like YOU anymore, Ashley, not at all!”

Ash paused at her tone of voice. Cocking his head to the side, he reached into his pocket, then pulled out something shiny and held it up to the dim light filling the place. 

When it struck Cheryl’s face she squinted. It was the mirrored pendant Ash had bought for Linda, the one Cheryl had told him was dopey looking when he’d proudly showed it off to her and Scotty in the S-Mart parking lot. She had no idea what he was trying to figure out, but whatever test he had set up for her she’d passed it. He sighed, shoved the necklace into the front pocket of his pants, and wrenched open the door to the cellar.

“Don’t do too much looking around,” he ordered, as if Cheryl could stop gawking at the disarrayed, bloody mess around her. There was goop on the floor, something wet warping the wood. She shuddered and tried to avoid contact with it. “Did you bring any shoes?” he asked.

“Only the ones I was wearing when we came.” She’d run barefoot through the forest like Snow White; the memory came to her in a painful wave.

She glanced to her left and choked back a scream at the sight of a blonde-haired woman in a sensible blouse and shorts, lying slumped on the floor, a dagger wedged between her shoulder blades. Too small to be Linda. By god, who was she?

“For god’s sake, don’t look if you’re gonna be a baby about it!”

Her temper flared hard and sharp at his words. “Excuse me? Which one of us was just violated by the shrubbery?” Ash shuddered, shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand. It was then that Cheryl noticed the chainsaw on his left hand. “How did you figure that out?”

He smiled fondly. “It was Annie’s idea. She was one of a kind,” he added as an afterthought.

“Ashley, what happened to her?! Who did that to you?” With frightened urgency, she added, “What is this place?”

Any hope she’d had of that mystery being solved died in a breath as the front windows blew in, filling the room with a powerful gust of wind. She barely had time to grab onto something, to cling to her brother before she was sucked out of the door and into a nauseating multicolored whirlwind of danger and death.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

They landed together in a rocky field, side by side.

With the car, because of course somehow it would follow Ash into the past, as if it were sentient, as if it had a mind of its own. 

She got up and dusted off her shirt. Watched Ash blink as he got to his feet.

“What in the hell?” he muttered, staring at what surrounded them. Which was a lot of underscrub and large rock formations. It was almost like an abandoned desert hellscape, with a few scraggly trees in the distance waving forlornly in the warm breeze. 

“Do you want to tell me what you did back there?” Cheryl asked.

“Long story,” said Ash. In the distance there were horses, thundering toward them.

Instinctively, he shoved her behind him and set his jaw, trying to seem as tall and tough as humanly possible.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Cheryl plucked at the lace sleeve of her dress. She supposed she looked all right. Once Ash had cleared up any lingering misunderstandings about why they’d arrived in this time (with his fist, naturally), he had desiccated one of the demons with which he’d been trapped.

A fate she’d been spared, to her disdain, because of her femininity. They had been separated in the courtyard – he was being fawned over and she had been sequestered with the noble women of the house, all of whom excitedly asked her questions about the future as she obfuscated her way around the details.

“Lady Cheryl.” The dark-haired woman was speaking to her now, maidenly and sweet at the moment – though that was not her demeanor fifteen minutes ago, when she’d hit Ash upside the head with a rock. Her name was Sheila, Cheryl remembered, and she was the blacksmith’s daughter. “Might I have a word with thee?”

“All right,” Cheryl placed aside the embroidery loop she’d been playing with and let the woman lead her to a quiet corner in the castle corridor.

“Thy brother,” she said shyly. “I was wondering if any maiden in thy time had set their cap for him.”

It took Cheryl a minute to understand what Sheila was saying. “Oh. He had a girlfriend but…” She bit her tongue very hard and said, “she isn’t with us anymore.”

Sheila caught her drift and nodded heavily. “I shall pray for her soul.”

“Thank you,” Cheryl said awkwardly. She tried not to think of what she’d say when she met up with Linda’s parents. ‘Sorry I stabbed your daughter to death’ definitely didn’t cover it.

“If Ashley is unattached,” Sheila flushed, then continued along modestly, “I shall not feel shame in accepting his tokens of esteem. Including his kiss.”

“Yep. He’s free and single.” Cheryl didn’t know what that actually meant for Sheila, as her knowledge of medieval social customs were spotty at best. Cheryl couldn’t help but envy Ash’s freedom; she, meanwhile she was stuck in a tower sewing; it was hard not to be bitter about her fate. “And to be honest he could use a civilizing influence in his life.”

“I may try to provide him as much.” Sheila flushed. “I do yearn to escape the chains that bind me to this place. I would fly like the doves that are escaping this plague befouling the land, if I could.”

“You and me both, sister,” Cheryl laughed. 

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

She dreamed of the woods. Of the scent of pine sap and sticky leaves under her feet. Of her own blood, running down her arms and thighs and sides. Of the sensation of hellfire taunting her vulnerable feet. 

Of a man on a white steed offering her rescue. 

But her fingers turned to talons. Her teeth turned sharp and bright. And through the ropes that bound her, from the fire that threatened her life, she wrung a scream of life.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

When she saw Ash the next morning he was whistling obnoxiously while shoeing his horse. Naturally. 

“Can I come with you?”

Ash rolled his eyes and grunted. “You crazy? It’s gonna be dangerous out there. I just got you back safe. Not gonna risk both of us dying.”

She frowned. “What if you don’t make it back?”

“Then the wiseman’ll take care of you until you can figure something out.” Ash lifted his chin. “Don’t lick anything and just…avoid anyone who starts coughing around you or whatever.”

“The way you did with Lady Sheila last night?”

Ash’s cheeks turned a dim shade of red. “That’s different. She’s a classy lady. Don’t go being a jerk to her while I’m not there.”

“I won’t. Actually, I kind of like her.” Cheryl leaned against the portcullis and raised an eyebrow. “She’s kind of good for you.”

Ash grumped as he mounted the horse. “Won’t do me any good. We have to go. We don’t belong in this time, and eventually we’re gonna have to leave it. So whatever you do, don’t get too attached.” 

Cheryl shrugged. Over on the staircase by the bailey’s entrance Sheila watched, her eyes shining as she kept an eye on Ash’s progress That was going to be ugly when it blew up in his face and Cheryl frankly hoped she had a first row seat for it.

Ash just got on his horse –with surprising elegance for a boy from Michigan who’d never been near one of the beasts before – and clicked his tongue. He nudged the horse into a running start, with Henry, the Wiseman and some of the men at arms in hot pursuit.

Cheryl frowned as she watched Ash wheel out of the castle. Frowned but stood aside. Watched the horse kick up a dramatic cloud of dust as it rushed away, keeping a careful, respectful distance from the snorting beast’s hooves.

Leaving her with nothing to do.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Sheila bombarded her with questions once they were alone. Cheryl tried to answer honestly as she sewed and Sheila dithered around her. The course of an afternoon and evening (a rapidly-descending one – what the fuck had Ash done now?) had given her time to embroider one blossom and one stem. The women around her were much more adept, and Cheryl yearned for a pencil, a pad, a book – something she was good at. Something that would give her a destiny that wasn’t entwined with Ash’s. 

Sheila cornered her away from the others, when she was busily teaching herself to add thread to the loom. “Art thou well?” Sheila asked her suddenly, completely apropos of nothing. “Thou seems rather quiet, or perplexed.”

“I’m thinking about my brother,” she said. “And the future.” For what kind of future did Cheryl have? Her dreams of being a commercial artist were fractured; could she stand hours sitting in a stuffy studio apartment drawing pictures of happy people consuming everything under the sun when she knew what real consumption felt like.

“’Tis nothing thou should be concerned with,” Sheila shrugged. “Thou cannot control thy future or thy past. All that exists is the now.”

“Can I tell you something?” Cheryl knew she’d never see this woman again, so she might as well be frank with her. "I have…nightmares,” Cheryl explained. “Something happened to me in the woods before. Something dark and terrible that I’d rather not talk about.” And which was inexplicable, she had to admit. _No big deal, a bunch of vines held me down and raped me and tried to demonically corrupt my flesh, but I’m fine!_ Who the hell would believe that story?

Sheila nodded once, thoughtfully. “It is better to get out the darkness,” She suggested. “Before it consumes thy soul whole.”

Cheryl winced. “I think I got my soul back entirely. I can’t know for sure. The darkness feels…more external to me than internal….I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying…”

“I understand,” Sheila said, “far more than you comprehend. I have seen it happen to my fellow women.”

Cheryl felt a welter of sympathy for the girl. These things loved to use women – not that they left men unscathed. She remembered her first glimpse of Ash’s pulped limb and shuddered in silence. She almost confessed her knowledge of the pain of hell, what she had walked through to return to the living world when they were interrupted. 

A great clatter arose in the hallway. “COME! SOMETHING IS AMISS!” shouted the Wiseman from the head of the stairs, rushing to the outside world, to the forcourt. Sheila and Cheryl gathered their skirts and raced after him, knowing only that something horrible was afoot.

And that, just as likely, it was Ash’s doing.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

He cloistered himself in the highest tower, after his failure was revealed – after Sheila was stolen. Cheryl sat with the book in her lap – frightened to interrupt him, to push him in such a time of crises.

Cheryl frowned and looked again at the tome settled upon her knee, the eerie sensation of dried human skin brushing her own living, bare flesh once again. She wondered why she could hold it without saying the words while he brother was doomed by its curse to resurrect the dead. Maybe because she had been one of them it could sense that she was its kin.

Maybe the words needed to be spoken only when it was initially retrieved - the Wiseman hadn’t spoken them when he took the book, and hadn’t repeated them when he handed the book over to Cheryl.

She ran a careful palm over the cover, his words echoing in her heart. “Take this, child. It will be mine soon enough, but it calls out to you,” he said. “It’s terribly hungry for you,” he had added, "and I have no earthly idea why."

“You can sulk as long as you want, Ashley, but I’m going to help these people find freedom.” She took a deep breath, and parted the covers of the Necronomicon. 

Setting sight on the book just once was enough to fill her brain. The language flooded her mind in a queasy, frightening rush, images flowing by and through her mind’s eye like a filmstrip projector gone amok. Abruptly it flashed through her mind precisely what she needed to do. She stood up. Her dry mouth coagulated around the sound of the words.

“We need to kill the leader.”

Silence filled the air between them, before he slammed open the door. “How the hell do you know what we need to do?” Ash asked, and she pretended not to notice that they were red-rimmed. “How the hell does anyone know what I’m going to do when I’m the fuckin’ chosen one and I messed up like a moron?”

“It’s the book. Whatever’s bound you to it bound me to it, too.” Her fingertips tightened on the volume. “It wants you to lead an army of men – and me to lead the women. Only together can we fight it.”

“Right, and I’m our Aunt Fanny.”

Her bottom lip tried to wobble, but she stuck her top teeth into it. No way would she show any sort of vulnerability at this point. “Aunt Fanny had more moles,” she said.

Ash eyeballed her silently. With a curl of his lip he grumbled and took hold of the volume. “All right. Since you think you know it all, we’ll do it your way.” A steely look strengthened his gaze; suddenly her brother looked leagues older than he ever had before. 

“Let’s get to work,” he said. 

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Cheryl stood dead-center in the very apogee of the castle’s forecourt. She and Ash traded off time with their regiments; he took the evenings up with his krav maga teachings, and she taught the women simple karate.

At first they had been hesitant to trust her – this stranger, the codicil of the chosen one, a woman like them but with the power of a general’s touch to her. She had to speak to each of them simply to convince them that she was no demon, no abhorrent disaster of some sort. 

She had four days to teach these women how to kick, bite and scratch their way to victory. And it turned out that each of them – in some way, at some point in their lives – had been forced to fight, with a dirk beneath their skirts and fire in their eyes.

She, too, knew the pain they had lived.

Together, they built a human wall, a backup plan for the men. They wove straw ladders and fashioned arrows and boiled pitch. They sharpened swords and built explosives under Ash’s instructive care. 

Cheryl sat back and looked at the results of her work as the sun set on the third day. Once upon a time she’d been a pacifist. She’d attended marches and abhorred guns and claimed that violence was an ugly, warping thing.

She felt the pressure of calluses forming upon her fingertips. Cheryl clutched the scythe in her hand. If she was indeed become death, destroyer of worlds, then death was going to have to obey her. She knew his foul breath and the kiss of his praising hand, and she would do anything to protect her big brother from his sting. Anything to protect these women who trusted her with their lives, with their children’s lives. 

And if she had to stop death – if she had to reverse it, even if she had to call on the already departed, then she’d do it.

There was something new in Ash’s eyes, as they nodded and smiled at each other during meals, or while passing in the courtyard. 

His respect was a lovely thing to have, but much more importantly she respected herself – this new self, made of flint, grit, piss and vinegar.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

She saw him just once during the battle – her goal was to keep herself alive, to keep her women alive, and to keep the book safe. And so she trusted that Ash was taking care of himself.

“I don’t know how you’re doing it,” he panted, punching the skull off of a shrieking skeleton. “I’ve already lost ten of my guys!” He sounded as petulant as he had whenever she’d managed to melt all of his army men whenever they’d played at war.

“You’re fifty men,” Cheryl pointed out, wiping a trace of blood from her bottom lip, “but we are a hundred women. “ She smiled as one of her charges ran by, a screaming, desiccated skeleton tucked under her arm like a football. “And a hundred women are about as strong as a locomotive running at full speed.”

He quite nearly rolled his eyes at her, but Cheryl kept a serene smile plastered to her face as she kicked a half-rotted foot soldier down the flagstone stairs with a single blow.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

After the battle she had an enormous glass of beer, which she swallowed down alone as the happy populace celebrated around her.

Cheryl couldn’t bring herself to be happy. She’d lost some good women out there. Bitterly, she knew she’d be attending a mass funeral the next day, to clash with the festive atmosphere of the night.

At the edge of the bonfire, Ash danced with Sheila. Cheryl watched them glide in the flickering shadows, and wondered at her brother’s lack of loyalty, at his lack of memory. While she mourned Linda and Shelly, he forged a connection with an innocent maiden who could not see the sheer five foot drop standing before her.

There were no romantic options for Cheryl . None of the men dared to approach her.

She had, she realized, made herself something of a holy relic. Joan of Arc, minus the fire.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

They sat facing the setting sun, a bottle of potion in Ash’s grip and a single horse providing them with transportation, bringing them toward the private cave in which they would sleep.

“So you want to keep going with this?” she asked. “You really want to keep fighting demons, instead of going back to Michigan and leading normal lives?”

“Do we have a choice?” he asked. “I think the killed – a – bunch – of –skeletons – while – leading – a – bunch – of – medieval – guys – in – battle thing kinda seals the whole promised one deal.”

She pushed up the muddy sleeve of her dress and anchored herself deeper into the saddle. Soon she’d have her jeans and sweaters back. Funny that that was the thing she missed most about the modern world right now. “Aww. You didn’t call them screwheads. You’re learning.”

“Yeah,” Ash said thickly. He turned an eye toward the castle, which was barely a dot in the distance. 

“Miss her already, don’t you?” 

“It’s fine. She’s better off without me.” He refused to look her in the eye, and Cheryl knew that when Ash was in a mood like this FORCING him to do so would likely be a bad choice.

“At least YOU got laid,” Cheryl complained. “What about me?”

“Are you shitting me? It’s bad enough you basically got knocked up with evilness, you wanna risk destroying space and time itself by screwing some ancient due?”

“So it’s fine when you do it?”

“I used a rubber,” he said smugly. 

“So could’ve I,” she said airily.

As they reached the mouth of the cave, Ash said, “y’know, I am glad you were there,” he admitted quietly. 

“I’m glad you were there, too,” she admitted.

And together they went inside to face their fates.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

She woke up to the taste of dust and the sound of her brother snoring around a mouthful of whiskers.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

It was quiet for a few weeks. Almost peaceful.

And in that time, Cheryl tried to live her life the way she always had; getting up, going to class, Every day, she forced herself to go to class. She made her fingers form themselves around the charcoal and to draw something that wasn’t a forest with eel-like vines reaching out to destroy. She forced the sound of a ticking clock and the sensation of flesh rending against the bare ground from her head. 

She was normal enough to draw attention. Normal enough to be asked out on a date.

She was on it when the skies inexplicably turned black and the wind picked up to that frightening, shrieking level, arrowing with intense force toward her brother’s place of work.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

“I told you,” she said, simply, helping him pick up body parts and broken china at the S-Mart.

“Yeah, yeah. Shaddup,” he grumbled.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

It was Cheryl, who spent hours communing with the pages they’d saved from Knowby’s cabin, who told him what the next move would be, what they would need to brace themselves for. They would need to travel the country and stamp out the evil Ash had unleashed; even the evil he’d unleashed in their own hometown.

It’s Ash’s fault. She saw the words tumble carelessly from his tongue, after all. And they were never hers to say.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Ash bought a car with the last of his S-Mart paycheck. She wanted something simple, something that wasn’t flashy, and something that they could ride around in and be completely undetected.

Ash wanted a Camero.

They compromised and bought a screaming red SUV with gun mounts on the sides and comfortable leg room for all. 

With the last of her student loan money, Cheryl bought a knife. A hunting knife that was twice the length of her forearm and sharp to the touch. Something she could strap to her hip and reach with minimal effort. He taught her to use it, watching with great satisfaction as she sliced through the straw-filled dummies he set up for practice. There was room enough for the ancient tomes she collected to be strapped to a shelf on the side of the van’s wall.

She took a correspondence course to finish off her education, and she bought a new drawing pad. This one wouldn’t just reflect the world around her, but would allow her to vent the ugliness in her mind. It would reflect the way things really were around her, the good and the bad.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

“You know,” she said suddenly, “there’s a way for you to see her. Not all time portholes are so violent -at least according to this text.”

“Her who?” Ash wondered. “That chick from Chicksaw County with the mole on her lip? ‘Cause I cut her head off when she went all Deadite on me.”

“Ash,” sighed Cheryl. “Maybe the woman you keep going to the bar to forget?” she suggested.

“I told you – it’s better that she get on with her life and forget I existed.”

“Right, because loveless marriages and creepy dive bar bathroom sex is so much better, right?” She might have a loveless marriage, or she might be just as pathetically lonely and miserable as you. What options!”

He rolled his eyes, shoved another bite into his mouth. Cheryl took the book onto her knees and crossed them, ignoring the Chinese food Ash had bought her, instead chanting the words, low and soft, and casting a small circular time porthole no bigger than a hand mirror, into which hopefully he would be able to communicate with Sheila through any looking glass she might peer into.

Luck would be involved in actually finding Sheila at the right time, and Cheryl couldn’t see from her end of the porthole what was occurring. But Ash’s eyes brightened subtly, and he stood up a little straighter, trying with a shift of his shoulder to appear neater and kinder and cleaner.

“Oh. Hey.” His voice cracked in that embarrassing way, that was that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ashley was still in there, hiding under layers of machismo and scarring.

Satisfaction and smugness warred for control of her heart. 

Love was out there waiting for her, too. She’d find it.

Later. After she’d used her powers to translate every last Sumerian text and helped herself and her brother find every single spot where all of these pesky demonic energy leaks were happening.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

“Uh, Cheryl?”

She’d been staring comfortably up at the stars, her white fingers pressing the edge of the blanket to her lips when he’d spoken.

“What?” she asked.

“Thanks for doing that for me. I know you didn’t need to.”

She shrugged. “You saved me. I saved you.”

It was that simple for her, just a little bit of sibling tit for tat. It was her job to take care of him, in her way – and so he would take care of her, a circle round that just might go on forever.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

She dreamed of high school for the first time since she’d left the place. School hadn’t been kind to Cheryl, except for a fantastic art teacher who taught her how to see colors, shapes and shadows that had never appeared to her naked eye before.

“Everything has a hidden texture,” he advised her. “Under shadows are sunlight, and under sunlight, the finest of shadows. Not everything is as simple as black and white, good and evil.”

And Cheryl, even in her dreams, shuddered. 

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

They kept going, because they had to, and because they were good at it. Cheryl’s empathetic skills grew stronger, and Ash’s capacity for physical violence grew stronger, more self-assured. Every day, her art grew more refined. Every day, she cast a spell for Ash and watched as he enjoyed himself. Every single day was a growing process. Every single day was about getting up, keeping flesh to bones, and sealing one more leak in hell's ceiling.

It wasn’t that bad of a life for the two of them. For a man who had to travel through time to see his girlfriend, who was born to deliver the world from the Deadites, who had a gun that never needed reloading and a chainsaw that never ran out of gas and his sister – the woman who had defeated death itself, who had the gift of language, who was swift with a blade and to know what she needed, as well as those around her. 

The Williams siblings. The saviors of human life as we know it.


End file.
